Fabrizio De André, the revered Italian singer/songwriter, created a deep and enduring body of work over the course of his career from the 1960s through the 1990s. With these translations I have tried to render his words into an English that reads naturally without straying too far from the Italian. The translations decipher De André's lyrics without trying to preserve rhyme schemes or to make the resulting English lyric work with the melody of the song.

"Don Raffaè" is based on the Italian crime boss Raffaele Cutolo, who has spent most of his life in prisons since 1963. Through his charisma and relational skills he was able to build and control a crime organization from within prison, and was also able to lead a remarkably comfortable life, complete with a personal chef to supply him his daily meals of lobster and wine. The chorus makes reference to Domenico Modugno's 1958 paean to coffee, "'O ccafe'", and to the importance of coffee in the cultural life of Naples.

My name is Pasquale Cafiero
and I’m the prison C.O. Sergeant.
My name is Cafiero Pasquale,
I’ve been at Poggio Reale since ’53.

And by the hundredth deadbolt
of the evening I feel like a wet rag,
lucky that in the special wing
there’s a brilliant man who speaks with me.

All day long with four villains –
robbers, pimps, bastards and lackeys –
all the hours with this rottenness
that spews threats and that rags on me.

But in the end I seat myself pope-like,
I unbutton, and read me the paper.
I consult with don Raffaè.
He explains my thinking, and we drink coffee.

Ah what great coffee –
even in jail they know how to make it,
with the recipe that
cellmate Ciccirinella’s mama
gave to him.

Front page, twenty news items,
twenty-one injustices, and what does the State do?
It’s dismayed, it’s indignant, it makes a pledge,
then it throws in the towel with great dignity.
I puzzle over it, dry my forehead,
luckily there is one who answers me.
Of that man, immense and most refined,
of don Raffaè I ask for his consensus.

A gentleman, who has six children,
requested a house and they gave advice,
while the alderman, may God pardon him,
raises minks inside these trailers.
From you, one move, one voice is enough,
for this Christ they take away the cross.
With respect, it’s three o'clock,
do you want the juice or do you want the coffee?

Ah what great coffee –
even in jail they know how to make it,
with the recipe that
cellmate Ciccirinella's mama
gave to him.

Ah what great coffee –
even in jail they know how to make it,
with the recipe of
cellmate Ciccirinella,
exactly like mama’s.

Here there’s inflation, devaluation,
and the stock market has it, whoever has it,
I don’t hold a sum save for that salary of mine
and two lottery numbers if I dream of papa.
Add my daughter Innocenza.
She wants a husband, she has no patience.
I don’t beg for mercy for myself.
Do I shave you or do you do it by yourself?

You hold a camel hair coat
that at the Maxi Trial you were the most handsome,
a brown pinstripe suit,
so it seemed on TV.
For this wedding, I pray of you, your Excellence,
lend it to me to make a good appearance.
I already have the shoes and the vest,
do you like the Campari or do you want the coffee?

Ah what great coffee –
even in jail they know how to make it,
with the recipe that
cellmate Ciccirinella’s mama
gave to him.

Ah what great coffee –
even in jail they know how to make it,
with the recipe of
cellmate Ciccirinella,
exactly like mama’s.

Here there’s no more decorum, the prisons of gold -
but who ever saw them, who knows?
These are crumbling, for this reason the bastards
keep their immunity.

Don Raffaè – you, politically,
I swear it, you'd be a saint.
But here inside you have to pay,
and outside these others are amusing themselves.

Speaking of which, I have a brother
who for fifteen years has been unemployed.
That one’s done fifty competitive exams,
ninety applications and two hundred appeals.
You who give comfort and work,
Your Eminence I kiss you, I implore you:
that one sleeps with mama and with me.
What cream of Arabia this coffee is!

It took six years after the tremendous success of Creuza de mä for De André to release his next studio album, Le nuvole (The Clouds). In the meantime, he and Mauro Pagani explored several avenues of musical collaboration which did not come to fruition. De André had this to say about Le nuvole: "I realized that people are just pissed off, and since Le nuvole is a symbol of this dissatisfaction, the transference, the intermediary for this general discontent, I would say that the album was welcomed almost as a banner, like an emblem of the anger in the face of a nation that is going to the dogs, and certainly not through any fault of the citizens." Additionally, Mauro Pagani said the album was a fantastic description of Italy in the 1980s, with parallels to Europe in the early 1800s: "Italy in the early 1980s was like Europe in 1815: the Congress of Vienna, the fall of the Napoleonic empire, the sharing of the goods among the winning powers, social classes built on wealth instead of aristocracy, a society of fake Christianity . . ." The title of and inspiration for the album came from the comedy of the same name by Aristophanes, whom De André greatly admired.

1 comment:

"brigadiere" it is not a prison commander but rather a prison guard. "Brigadiere" technically speaking is a grade on the hierarchy of the prison guard, just a step above a common prison guard but far far away from the head of the prison